101–110 of 184 posts
i'm temped to buy the used enterprise equipment but in the end, i ended up buying small Intel NUC machines for my homelab. power consumption of these NUCs is almost negligible while one Dell R620 with dual CPU takes 150-200W at idle.
For people who are really into system administration.
Mostly skimmed over here, but a key point is that you should be trying to build a cheap version of what you'd use at work. The closer you are to your work environment, the more you can applicably "try things" at home, and bring them to work with you. And since most of us are pretty busy, it's nice to not have to learn a whole new skill set just for maintaining our home networks.
I don't get why we'd pay for and maintain the test environment the employer should have. Should I bring my own printer and laptop to the office too?
There's a stark difference in that the things you host and do with your home setup are your own, but the learnings and technologies can be applied more broadly.
Any recommendations on home networking? I couldn't figure out what the established approach would be to having access to the infrastructure over a consumer internet connection and without exposing the rest of the network. All resources I've seen so far don't give enough background to seem reliable.
The one downside I've encountered so far is that I often have devices sending traffic from home network -> droplet -> home network, since they "don't know" that they're actually on the same local network, and exclusively communicate through the VPN. My ping to DO's datacenter is low enough that this hasn't really bothered me, though.
Router =/= Firewall. If you are planning to host stuff, or even just to protect your own things, you better get something like Sonicwall or similar. At my home I have a sonicwall, synology nas, 2 dell servers, power supplies. Not in a single closet though. To me, the server security is far more important than the looks. Spend the most money on firewall, rest is just for looks. Patch panel for home setup sounds excess…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a mini-itx case with 8 5400 rpm drives, and some basic xeon (E12xx, forgetting the exact model), and I'm shocked at how well modern power saving techniques work. When it's just sitting there being a file server it consumes less than 100 watts, and even when I'm pulling from it at over a gigabit it goes up to maybe 110. It also has 120 mm fans, but I barely notice when they kick on. The loudest part of the whol…
Mini-ITX case recommendation that holds 8 3.5" drives please?
https://www.u-nas.com/xcart/cart.php?target=product&product_...
Especially since my entire industry seems determined to see how far it can push spying on its users, leveraging power over them, etc. (All evidence is: no real limit yet.)
Also, it's just fun to play with gear.
Currently, I want to engineer for reliability, audible noise, power consumption, and price. (Will a RasPi with its SD card and wallwart be reliable enough? What about an Atom box, with Noctua fans, and mirrored 2.5" drives? Do I really want a pfSense box and some external WiFi APs, or can I make OpenWrt on plastic home routers do everything, and isn't Ubiquiti gear pretty but closed? Remember the price doubles if I want to have cold spares. Has the novelty of the big blue Palo Alto Networks box worn off yet? Can I discreetly mount my rack console in my living room IKEA, without a deep 4-post cabinet, nor the official rails kit?)
Toys get traded on /r/homelabsales, craigslist, and eBay.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a lot of people, a home lab isn't just to provide themselves a service, they actively enjoy the setup and management. So I think your final line is more personal preference than a lesson most people with home labs need to realise.
Yeah, home labbing is about the journey but eventually the journey ends once you've learned how to use some of the technology you wanted.
The cost of purchasing (eBay) and running the servers paid for itself in 6 months on my first "IT" salary.
I sold on the whole lot to another guy trying to boost his skills too.
It was fun and served its purpose.
I had a fairly large home lab once. I had a fully topped out SPARCserver 1000E and a disk enclosure in my bedroom. I also once lived with an E450 on the kitchen table for a month. But they’re noisy as hell, inconvenient, expensive to keep running and expensive to feed with power and take up a lot of room and thus are not compatible with family and general sanity over time. They become needy balls and chains. So roll…
Your conclusion is wrong, you just found out homelabs is not a hobby for you. People have way more expensive and time consuming hobbies.